my marks were pretty good. As in the important courses, Bs in the unimportant ones. i'm excited about not having to take phys ed anymore next year - it always drives my average down, every year. i get As in english and math and science and then this big, stupid ugly B in phys ed that takes me down a grade point. it's really unfair. who cares about phys ed? why should it kill my average like this? the other class i always get Bs in is french. i'd like to squirm out of it, but i know my dad won't let me. they say it's important to speak french in ottawa, but the truth is that i've never met anybody that speaks french here, ever. supposedly, you need to speak french to get a job in the government. well, that's easy: i won't work for the government, then. they made the rules, not me. i just find it really irrational to have to speak two languages and so i can't study for it because it's just a stupid idea. i'd rather be doing anything else at all. why can't we all just speak one language? i don't even care if it's english. i'd be happy to learn chinese starting tomorrow if it meant i only had to deal with one language. i'd even be happy to learn french tomorrow if i could forget about english altogether. what drives me crazy about learning multiple languages is the redundancy. it's inefficient. illogical. irrational...
i don't know what i'm going to do this summer. i usually spend the summer entirely by myself; i've never had any friends. i went to elementary school on an army base but i didn't live on the army base so there was never anybody around that i went to school with. so, i would just stay inside. last summer, i played a lot of guitar and read a lot of books. my stepmother wants me to get a job, but that sounds like a waste of time. what would i spend the money on? i'd rather not have money and have time than have money and not have time. i don't really understand why she's so insistent. dad says i'm still too young to work and i shouldn't worry about it, but he wants me to go get a social insurance number anyways, just in case. she gets really mad when he says that, and says i'll have to do chores, then, instead. she seems to honestly think that i have a responsibility to pay rent through manual labour in order to stay here. she calls it "room and board".
i hope that what happened last year doesn't happen again. i was having a nice summer until my step-mother took her yearly holidays and forced me to spend the day outside pulling weeds. she insisted i didn't tell my father. so, i was working six hours a day in the hot sun for a whole week. i assumed my allowance would go up as a result as i was doing more than my expected weekly chores, but when i inquired she told me that i was just paying the rent. this made perfect sense to her. it did not make any sense to me at all - so, i refused to pull weeds any longer unless she promised to pay up and she locked me out of the house. she said i was getting evicted. when my dad got home, i explained what had happened and a huge fight erupted. he told me that i was right and she was wrong and took me to the music store and let me pick out $100 worth of cassettes. he wanted me to understand that my labour was worth something and i should never work for free. he said she has a "chemical imbalance" and goes crazy sometimes and it's something we'll both have to live with forever. he said she understands that what she did was wrong. but, they fought about it for a long time afterwards. i don't know if i agree that she thought what she did was wrong.
i think at least a part of the summer is going to be spent in the basement building a sound proof room. dad used to play the drums when he was younger, and he wants a place where he can go back to playing them. my stepmother won't let him get a drum kit because it's too loud. so, he wants to get sound paneling and insulation for an isolated room in the basement. he says he'll need me to help him - and that i should bring some friends over to start a band once we're done. he'll even put a bass in there, too.
i listened to the new soundgarden record a lot this month and really like it, but it's been replaced in my walkman by the new nine inch nails record. my computer is too slow to run quake; i don't have enough ram for it. it can run wolfenstein, but i haven't played wolfenstein in a few years. i only play civ 2, now. but, my step uncle is a really big id games fan and he let me dub a copy of it. he thought the soundtrack was effective in the game, but that it was really funny that anybody might listen to it as music. he says he'd rather listen to the who.
i don't think it's as good as fixed, which is my favourite record of all time. it's different. it's kind of scary, almost. but, i've been listening to it nonstop since sunday and i just can't get out of it.
it's getting late, so i should pretend that i'm going to bed. i'm too old to have a bed time, but i know that people have to get up in the morning so i adjust to it in keeping quiet past a certain time. i can't say when my next update will be. maybe the room will be done?
